Feline House Soiling course

I’ve signed up to take an online CE class on the subject of ”Feline House Soiling”.  It’s happily not a major issue around our house (just a rare annoyance), but I get lots of emails about it at my Wee Paws email address.  In fact, house soiling is a nuisance behaviour in about 50% of cats that people want to surrender to me.  I think I already do a pretty good job of making suggestions and giving advice, but I hope this course will fill gaps in my knowledge.  The best part is that it’s open to Vets and Vet Techs, so the information won’t be simplified or edited.  The course starts the week of April 23rd.  If any of you have any specific questions that you’d like me to try to find answers to while I take this course, please let me know!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 04/11 at 03:06 AM

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  1. This is ancient history, but I had one cat who developed an oddity that I’ve always been at a loss to explain. 

    At the age of about 16 or 17, in otherwise pretty good health, he developed the habit of hopping onto the electric stove and peeing on it - in great volumes, alas.  It got so every night I’d have to scrub out the stove with ammonia.  Literally. 

    He went outside but used a box inside, which he still used for poops, but peeing was on the stove.  I thought the ammonia would discourage him, but it didn’t.  The vet could find nothing wrong with his urinary function (in his life he sometimes had UTI’s, and his method of alerting me was to bellow from the bathtub until I came in and saw bloody pee in the tub - he was a very smart guy!).

    I was renting a house that was an odd shape, but the kitchen had a long countertop that began at the front windown running back that served no purpose for me, but Butchie would use it as a route to the stove.  I finally got him to stop by putting a litter box on the countertop and when he encountered it first, he peed and didn’t go further to the stove. 

    I lost him in ‘91, but I still miss that guy!  (and lest you think I’m a saint I used to become unglued when I’d come home to the stove - he knew to stay out of my way, meaning he knew he shouldn’t do it, which made the mystery all the more mysterious. 

    There were no major changes - him, a female 14 y/o cat whom we’d had for 12 years and me in a house we’d been renting for several years.  Thank god I was single because not alot of folks would let you get away with a litter box on a countertop in the kitchen, of course. 

    Anyway, I’ve always been at a loss to understand this, so if you learn anything that might explain it I’d be interested to learn what it is.

    Posted by Print  on  04/14  at  09:16 PM

  2. Off the top of my head…

    It’s obviously difficult to say what caused the initial peeing incident.  Even though the vet couldn’t find a problem, it may have been some sort of temporary urinary tract irritation which just cleared up on its own.  Peeing in odd places can also be an emotional reaction to something—maybe the cat was mad at you (for example, maybe the cat was voicing dismay that you’d been on a vacation, been to the home of someone else who owned a cat, etc.).  Another emotional reaction would be a fright at seeing/smelling another cat outside.  Maybe some stray male cat wandered by your house, sprayed the outside wall, and your cat could smell it.  The cat would pee on something inside inside the house as a way to “claim” the territory.  Peeing on a stove sounds pretty peculiar, but maybe it’s better than peeing on your bed, or in your shoes!

    The above can account for the first incident, but I’m afraid that you actually compounded the problem by cleaning with ammonia smile Ammonia is a component of urine, and will attract a cat back to a spot.  You thought you were cleaning up, but you were actually leaving an invitation to pee there again!  I’m sorry I wasn’t around to mention this… I can only imagine how frustrated you must have been!  No matter why your cat peed on the stove the first time, the ammonia was telling the cat that it was okay to keep peeing there.

    I clean up with a mild bleach/water solution when Jackson pees over the side of the litterbox.  I try not to use too much bleach, as I don’t want to kill myself with chloramine gas when the bleach and the urine react.  Here’s a good article about bleach, the all-purpose cat cleaner-upper: 

    http://www.showcatsonline.com/x/bleach.htm

    I hope this helps, but if I find out anything else that I think might be relevant, I’ll let you know!

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  04/15  at  01:15 AM

  3. Oh good god.  I have no idea why that ammonia thing never occurred to me. I’ve certainly been bowled over enough times in my life by a litter pan allowed to sit a little past it’s time.  My poor, precious little fellow; I can’t believe I set him up like that. 

    What you say makes perfect sense.  It doesn’t explain the initial event - the house was in the side of a hill, so nothing could travel on that side, but cats were often marking our front porch (also lots of raccoons, possum, etc - in the middle of Seattle!).  He just dealt with it by marking back into the bushes beyond the porch and surrounding the house.  It was a never ending thing.

    I never cease to amaze myself when it comes to the depths of idiocy I can ascend.  Poor guy :(

    Thanks, Leigh Ann.  There’s actually some comfort knowing it was me, and not him.

    Posted by Print  on  04/15  at  07:36 PM
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